Part journal, part nonsense, part sublime inspiration, wholly Faith-ful

Different Times, Different Mores

I’m still on my Elsie Dinsmore binge (she says, blushing with slight embarrassment). And I’m on book 4, Elsie’s Womanhood, in which she marries the inestimable Mr. Travilla. I chuckled when she calls him Edward for the first time in front of her father, and blushes at her father’s disapproving look (it reminded me of Emma’s referring to Mr. Knightly as “my Mr. Knightly”). I’ve laughed more than once at some turn of phrase that has completely changed in meaning since the books were written. And I wonder, as I have wondered every time I’ve read the books (yes, I’ve read them multiple times. Hush, now!), how these incredibly pure Christians can uphold slavery.

In the fourth book, the Horace Dinsmores and the Edward Travillas are fortuitously in Europe when the Civil War breaks out, so the reader hears snippets about the war in the form of letters from home. On the day that they receive the fateful news of the Emancipation Proclamation, Mr. Dinsmore (Elsie’s father) remarks that it will take a good deal out of their pockets, several hundred thousands from Elsie (who has inherited her late mother’s estate). Elsie’s not worried about the money, and says that if she “were only sure it would add to the happiness of [her] poor people, [she] should rejoice over it” (chapter 25). The husband of Elsie’s mammy is overjoyed to hear the news, as he has been praying for freedom for quite some time. Elsie’s mammy, Chloe, on the other hand, is distressed at the thought of having to leave her beloved family, and doesn’t want to be free. Elsie quietly assures her that she shan’t have to leave them at all, and it would break her heart if they had to part.

This dilemma isn’t, of course, confined to old novels. The other night Joe and I watched part of a PBS documentary about Thomas Jefferson. One cannot talk seriously about Jefferson’s ideology (“We believe that all men are created equal”) without talking about the fact that he was a slave-owner. He did, in fact, propose numerous times while a member of the Virginia House of Burgess that slaves be emancipated, with no success. If he believed slavery was immoral, why did he own slaves? Why did he not emancipate his slaves? Without talking to him one on one, there’s no way to definitively answer that question. That issue alone does not negate all the good he did.

It’s a common mistake, I believe, to judge the actions of others in different eras by our own cultural mores. For someone in this day and age to own a slave is unthinkably appalling, yet it happens even now. Is it right? No. Not at all. The fact remains that I am not an 18th century plantation-owner. I’m not an ancient Roman landowner (yes, they had slaves). If a person is taught from the time of birth that slavery is not only an acceptable institution, but the normal order of things within one’s society, then the likelihood that the person will even think to change it is small indeed.

Obviously even in the times when it was common to own slaves, there were were those who understood it to be an immoral thing. They freed their own slaves. They helped others escape to freedom. They spoke out against slavery. They wrote against it. They pledged their lives and their sacred honour to ensure that it was brought to an end. In the Civil War, I had kinfolk on both sides. A something-great granduncle enlisted in the Union Army and died when he was quite young on the first day of the Battle of Shiloh. I’m proud of him, even though I’m sorry that his life was cut off so young. And yes, I’m proud of my something-great grandmother, who taught her slaves to read, even though it was illegal (if I’ve got the story straight). She was something of a firecracker, and I have immense respect for her.

There are so many questions that appear to be perfectly straightforward on the surface. Then you begin digging and they’re not as easy as they first seem to be. I think my grandmother was a good woman; I think my uncle Alexander Waller was a good man; and I think Thomas Jefferson was a good man.

I’m not sure I’m doing such a good job of making my point. I just know that as I myself have more knowledge and understanding than I did as a child, so that I could not judge my youthful actions based on the knowledge I now have, no more can I judge honourable righteous persons of another era based on knowledge that is common in my own era.

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Yeah, office mom and I were talking about that not too long ago. She firmly believes that black history should be mandatory in the schools and I agree. It was an elective where she went to school and I think learning all that had a profound impact on the person she is now. Interesting thoughts.

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